Thirty-seven
"VIVIENNE!"
He screamed her name as he watched the last of the balcony overhanging the abyss begin to crumble.
He watched the forms of the Inquisitor and his allies fall toward the unending blackness. Their bodies tumbled downward amid the broken chunks of stone and debris as the entire structure collapsed.
He watched her feet go out from under her - how gracelessly her arms and legs seemed to flail as she was thrust into open air - as the stones fell around her.
The Inquisitor, below them all, fell first, his arms cartwheeling through the air in a futile attempt to stop himself from falling.
Taesas felt ill, stone cold as he stood at the edge of the wall, watching it all transpire before his eyes.
And then, a flash.
The burst of green light pulsed off Trevelyan's outstretched palm. The air beneath him split open in a disc, like fabric stretched over a barrel being pulled to either side from the middle. He felt a sudden rush of energy wash across him as the Fade bled into the world.
They fell into the green ring.
None of them, not Trevelyan or Hawke or Stroud, nor Vivienne or Warden Blackwall or the demon-ghost they called Cole came out the other side. The stones falling vanished too, dropping into the disk that had opened beneath the Inquisitor.
And with a flash and a crackle, the ring vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
The debris that still fell tumbled downward, stones bouncing and knocking off one another as they dropped toward the abyss. They continued to fall, until they vanished into the darkness below, unlike the humans and the pieces of the walkway that had fallen just before it.
Taesas' eyes darted around the fortress, to the walkways and pillars that surrounded the now-destroyed ledge. He looked for any sign of any of them. Perhaps the Inquisitor had opened some sort of gate, that might have spit them elsewhere into Adamant. Such portals were only theoretical but, despite the failings of many mages attempting to create them, the calculations and reasoning used to postulate their existence had held up to rigorous examination.
He couldn't see them anywhere near the ledge where they had fallen. He stood, his hands gripping tightly to the lip of the wall, for a few seconds longer in silence. He continued to spin his gaze around, looking for any of the same green fire, feeling with his sixth sense for any disturbance in the flow of magic.
He saw nothing. He felt nothing.
Perhaps it had dropped them elsewhere?
He turned, darting back along the upper walkways of the fortress, back the way he had come as he slipped away from the central yard to follow behind the Inquisitor and his company as they chased the Warden Commander and the Magister deeper into the fortress. He had quickly moved from corner to corner, keeping himself shielded from the dragon's gaze as it circled about Adamant and swooped down to belch its breath of chaotic energy at its Magister's pursuers.
He came back to the walkway overlooking the central courtyard, where the Wardens and Inquisition forces now stood at an uneasy standstill. Taesas quickly glanced around, searching the upper levels for any sign of Vivienne or remnants of the green light he had seen.
His gaze whipped around the towers, seeing no one else standing atop them. Wardens stood, bows lowered, around the upper walkways. Below, he scanned quickly over soldiers, dismissing the pointed helms of the Inquisition and the winged helms of the Wardens. He saw blue and white tabards and the pale green of Inquisition.
Vivienne was always unmistakable in a crowd. Her ebony skin, her tall and perfect posture, the wide, flamboyant collars, her luxurious and pointed henins, none of them could be missed when she entered a room. At the balls and banquets and fetes and parties and conferences, she commanded the eyes of the entire gathering wherever she went. If there was anyone to pick out of a crowd, it was her.
And Taesas did not see her.
She had not fallen into the abyss. He had seen it with his own eyes. Yes, perhaps, in that moment of disorder, he might have missed one person falling amidst a pile of rubble. He might have missed two or three, even, but not six. And his eyes were not deceiving him when he watched chunks of stone, broken pieces several times larger than any man, vanish into the light.
The stones that fell after it fell like stones should. The ones that had come before, no, they had gone somewhere else. Vivienne, she had gone somewhere else with them.
The light. The light had been green. The spark had come from the Inquisitor's hand. The phenomena had started with him.
The mark, the Anchor, he could point it at the rifts and close them. The Elder One had come seeking it at Haven. The Elder One who had caused the Breach, he came seeking it at Haven because he wanted to reclaim it in order to reopen the massive tear in the sky. The Inquisitor had the power to close the rifts, but the Elder One had not sought that power.
He had sought the power to open the rifts.
Taesas glanced down to the bottom of the yard, where the Inquisition soldiers had pushed the Wardens away from the bending, twisting form of green light that shifted over the platform. The rift was large, larger than any Taesas had encountered to this point.
It was stretched so far out, its barrier between the physical world and the Fade so thin that even from where he stood atop the tower, he could see the massive demon moving on the other side of the tear. The Magister, the Wardens, they had been so close to opening the tear a bit wider and bringing through the monster that awaited on the other side.
The vivid green color that shone off it was the same as the light that pulsed from the Inquisitor's hand. They were one and the same, because the rifts and the Anchor were linked. And as he fell, he had pointed his hand downward into the empty air beneath him.
A rift.
It was a rift.
The Inquisitor, in his free fall, knowingly or unknowingly, had opened a rift beneath them.
Taesas began to march toward the staircase down, descending back toward the yard as he thought.
The rifts. Where did the rifts go? When they formed in the countryside, the tears in the Veil belched demons. They were not unlike more traditional tears in the Veil that mages sometimes caused and that Templars or mages could mend. The rifts could not be shut by such orthodox means, but they were the similar to those tears.
The demons could come through because the tears were a doorway into the physical world. The other side, the other side of those doorways was the Fade. The demons could only come through there and manifest into a physical form because they were tethered to the energy that bled out of the Fade. Even the demons that spawned from the rifts were tied to it. They could only move so far from the tiny breaches before the energy that leashed them drew them back toward it.
If the Inquisitor had truly opened a rift, there was only one destination it went.
The Fade.
Taesas stopped as he came to the bottom of the stairs at the final destination of his rapid chain of thought. He felt his stomach roll over and a sudden cold shock run through his body.
Mortals could not exist in the Fade.
When a mage entered the Fade, it was only the consciousness that went there and manifested itself into what appeared to be a physical shape. But the body stayed where it was, whether lying asleep in bed, in the enchanting chambers, in the summoning circles or upon the floor of the Harrowing chamber. The body never went beyond the Veil because it was incapable of crossing the barrier.
Or was it?
The Chant of Light spoke of the ancient Magisters who had breached the Veil and walked physically upon the lanes of the Golden City, blackening it with their impurity. There were volumes and volumes of treatises and debate on the nature of the stories of the breach of the Golden City.
In secret they worked
Magic upon magic
All their power and all their vanity
They turned against the Veil
Until at last, it gave way.
Above them, a river of Light,
Before them the throne of Heaven, waiting,
Beneath their feet
The footprints of the Maker,
And all around them echoed a vast
Silence
But when they took a single step
Toward the empty throne
A great voice cried out
Shaking the very foundations
Of Heaven and earth:
And So is the Golden City blackened
With each step you take in my Hall.
Marvel at perfection, for it is fleeting.
You have brought Sin to Heaven
And doom upon all the world.
Was the Canticle of Threnodies literal truth or was it merely allegory? Taesas had read convincing arguments upon both sides. The Chantry scholars disagreed whether the passages meant that their physical feet had pressed against the physical walkways of the Golden City itself, or, whether, as they understood travel in the Fade now, it was only they had found a way to send their metaphysical forms into the Golden City, a feat that, to this day, had never been replicated despite the trying of many, many daring scholars who viewed the floating black fortress in the sky and found themselves unable to resist the temptation to get there despite its ominous history.
No scholar working in the Andrastian Chantry disagreed, however; that the intrusion be it physical or not had led to darkspawn and Blight upon Thedas. Nothing good had come from intrusion into the Fade.
He scanned his memory, trying to recall the details of the Canticle of Silence, one of the heretical, dissonant verses he had been lucky enough to read at one point outside the watchful eye of the Templars and the Circle.
It had been years since he laid eyes upon that verse and the exact details were lost to his memory. But even still, he did not recall it being any more clear than the Chant. It told a slightly different story of the Magisters and their entry into the Fade, but the basics all were the same as far as he could remember.
The Magisters enter the Fade. The Golden City is blackened. The magisters are punished and cast down from the beyond.
But the religious texts were just that, religious texts. They would have been written, changed and sanitized over the centuries to fit the immediate political needs of the leaders. At the core they told the stories of creation and of prehistory, but Taesas held no illusions that despite his belief and vigor for the Chantry, that neither it, nor the Imperial Chantry, did not tell a story that also served their political purposes.
Could they have been wrong? Was it still possible? The rise of the Chantry and the fall of Ancient Tevinter had ensured that never since had there been the power and resources to make another attempt to breach so deeply into the Fade.
And the rifts. The rifts were unlike any magic Thedas had seen before. The Inquisitor, the Inquisitor himself might be proof that what was once thought to be impossible might not be. Witnesses, multiple witnesses at the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes had said they say Trevelyan emerge from inside the Fade. They had seen a woman, they had heard her voice call out when he emerged from the Breach itself.
If it had been one man, perhaps, the claims could have been dismissed. But it was many. It was on that belief that Seeker Pentaghast had detained him in the beginning. It was on that belief that people flocked to Haven, on the belief that he was the chosen of the Maker's Bride, sent directly from the world beyond to help them.
If that was true, if the Inquisitor himself was proof, then perhaps there was hope that Vivienne still lived.
Taesas stood before the rift, glancing into the shifting, glass-like light. He could see the jagged landscape there, not unlike the visions of the Fade he had perceived when he traveled there without the facade of spirits and demons creating the false reality. He looked at the demons, powerful demons, that he could see moving on the other side.
Within, he could feel the ice run through his veins as he spotted the form of Keeper Ishemaya on the other side, in her furs and leather and the stark lines of the vallaslin tattooed across her face. Her greyed hair, the wrinkled lines across her face and the knotted wood staff slung across her back were all just as he remembered from his youth.
It was not her, he knew. But what power must a demon possess to feel the deepest pit of his mind and deceive his eyes in such a way across the Veil itself?
If Vivienne and the others were there, somewhere inside the Fade within the sphere of this powerful demon, they would need all the aid they could get.
The rift before him appeared stable, at the moment, as he stepped closer to it. The Inquisition soldiers guarding it cast their gaze at him, but none stopped him as he approached the shifting shape before him.
He reached out his hand, his fingers moving toward the edges of the rift. His fingers dipped into the light, a slight static pulsing through his hand as it moved inside but not through the rift. It was not like water suspended weightless above the ground, where he could penetrate his fingers through it. It had no physical form, although he could gaze through it, it was only light, unable to be touched.
Taesas withdrew his hand quickly, before doing anything more to disturb what could become an unstable wound in the Veil, and stepped back from it.
It was useless. He could not walk into the rift even if he wanted to. He had known that, perhaps, before he even reached out to touch the rift itself. The scholars who had studied the Veil knew that it was not like a curtain that could be pulled aside so that one could walk between two planes. No, it was more like a bubble that was everywhere at once but equally nowhere. You could not perceive it, not until it was torn.
"Tear. Veil."
He had struggled to speak those words, forcing them between his lips through the incantations of Nethra that bound his mind and body in her lair within the Tirashan.
He had felt the weakness in the Veil there and knew that, with effort, the barrier could be broken. Tearing the Veil had revealed the demon that lived inside the fool girl, drew it out into the open where it had been able to destroy it. Where Vell had destroyed it.
Vell.
When they had first met it had been on the mission to Ceraux, to observe the experiments of the Collective. The Collective had warded off a dormant rift, much as this one appeared to be. And in their tampering, in their experiments they had connected to the rift.
And physically opened it…
Behind him, the last assault group was just now approaching, with Matteo and his daughter at the lead, with some of the remaining soldiers with them. All of the other rift mages were absent, perhaps left behind on the walls?
At the sight of him, Matteo stopped, placed his hand on his daughter's shoulder and turned her away from the plaza.
Taesas' group had encountered light resistance within the inner fortress, weak demons and frightened Wardens, that he and his soldiers had smashed with relative ease. They had arrived in the central plaza just after the Inquisitor and his men had confronted Clarel and the Magister.
He hurriedly moved across the courtyard to meet them stopping quickly before Vell.
"I need you to open this rift," he commanded.
"What?" she asked, wrinkling her stupid, rebel, malcontent face.
"I don't have time to explain," Taesas immediately followed. "At Ceraux, the Collective had opened the rift. I need you to do that to this rift, just enough so I can step inside."
Vell scrunched her nose even more. "What?" she repeated again, stupidly.
"The Inquisitor opened a rift and he and his party fell into it," Taesas explained quickly, losing his patience with her. She didn't need to know why. She just needed to do it. "I suspect they are in the Fade, in an area occupying the same physical space as the fortress.
"If I enter this rift," he said, pointing over his shoulder, "I can meet them and assist them."
Vell leaned slightly to the side and looked at the rift, then back at Taesas. "Are you fucking insane?" she asked. "You remember what happened when Julion opened that rift, don't you?"
"If we lose the Inquisitor, all is lost." That was true, although it was only a secondary reason to him. "It's a risk we have to take."
He could see that Vell immediately saw through that farce.
"It's fucking stupid, is what it is. And I don't even know how to open the rift, even if I wanted to," she said as her eyes grew serious and her voice grave. "Which I don't."
"Don't lie to me!" he shouted as he reached out, grabbing the collar of her jacket with his hand as he jerked her closer. "I know you know how. Now open the rift. That is an order."
His voice dropped to a grave tone, deeper and more practiced than any pitiful attempt at strength she could vocalize at him. His eyes locked into hers, boring down into her. This was no time for her childish rebellion. Lives were at stake and he would not stand idly by and let Vivienne perish within the Fade if he could possibly aid her.
Vell's eyes didn't flinch, holding his steely gaze with one of her own that was equally as stony.
"I don't take orders from you," she said with dripping disdain.
Her eyes broke his stare as she turned them down to his hand gripped around her jacket, then back up at him. "Now let go of me, before I make you let go." Her words were calm and hard, with no fear or uncertainty in them. It was a threat, spoken truly.
Taesas jerked his hand, shaking her body as screamed into her face.
"Open the fucking rift!"
She lifted both of her arms over her head, slamming her fists down into his forearm to break his grasp on her jacket. As his hand unclenched and he lost his grip, she was already raising her left foot, planting her boot into his midriff and pushing backward with a kick.
As his feet slid back across the dusty stones, he was already pulling his staff from his back. As he bent his ankle downward and jammed his foot into the ground to stop himself, he was already twirling the staff in his hand until the rounded end was out. He swung the rod across his body, the bludgeon whistling around as he drove the metal ball toward the side of her head.
She jumped back, a moment too late, as the edge of it made light contact with the side of her cheek, turning her head to the side.
He quickly pulled the staff back, spinning it in his hand to trade the rounded-end for the speared tip and tucked his back under his right arm. He lifted his left hand, summoning a barrier just as Vell turned back toward him, bringing a long, hooking punch from her right shoulder that she telegraphed an hour before she moved it a single inch. He pushed more mana into the shield as he set his feet, locking himself to the ground as his years of force magic training had taught him to do.
Taesas could feel the pressure on his arm as her rift magic strike collided against his barrier. As the milky shield gave wave and broke under the stronger blow, he pushed his hand forward at the elbow, firing his own wall of force toward her to repel the blow backward.
Vell staggered, likely not expecting him to be able to deflect her heretical magic and certainly not to counter through it. As she flailed, Taesas thrust his staff ahead, as straight and steady as years of only disciplined training could make, as he pointed it upward toward her left shoulder. She wore no armor, making it easy for the blade to pierce the leather of her jacket and begin to drive into the soft muscle at her armpit.
She recoiled backward as she felt the sting of his spear. He easily resisted the black entropic energy she sloppily tossed with her right hand toward him in an attempt to disorient him as she retreated a step. He closed the fingers of his left hand, snapping her in a flash of ice to chill and slow her as he steadily marched ahead. He could see the fire spreading up into her hands to try to shed the frost. His fingers traced the memorized pattern quickly, flawlessly as he tossed the glyph of neutralization down at her feet.
She seemed confused as the glyph lit, killing the fire in her palm but also breaking the ice that he had bound her with just a second prior. By the time she looked back to him instead of to her own spell, he was already whipping the blunt edge of the staff around again, wrapping it with force magic as he swung it through her lower legs, sweeping her off of her feet as she tumbled to the ground.
The Inquisition soldiers parted like a wave behind her, none of them, wisely, wanting to step between the Enchanter and his prey.
"I don't want to injure you," Taesas said as he dipped his staff toward her, lifting her body off the ground into a cage of spirit energy that held her in place, squeezing her just enough to elicit pain but not so tight as cause any serious injury. If she lost consciousness or died, she could not do as he asked. "Just open the rift."
He could see her trying to squirm and could feel the emanations of magic around him twisting strangely. Taesas could feel the turbulence in the connection between him and the Fade as he drew the mana through to maintain his spell. He had felt that before, at Skyhold, and knew it to be her drawing on the current of her heretical power.
Taesas tightened the grip of the crushing prison around her until her mouth opened with a silent gasp and he could see the muscles in her face and neck bulge at the strain of trying to resist.
"Do as I command!" he shouted again as he squeezed her. As much as he needed her, he couldn't help but take delight in the way her face twisted in pain as he crushed her with his magic. The vibrations across the Veil dissipated as he could sense her body fall limp, unable to withstand the force of his magic.
Were it any other situation, he might tighten the noose, crunch every bone in her body at once and let her fall into a bloody heap. It would be fitting payback for her dishonorable attack on him in the Tirashan, for the indignity she had thrown in his face the humiliation she had dealt him in the eyes of Vivienne.
He needed her, though, for this one moment.
"I…" she struggled to grunt as she cast her hot eyes down on him. "I won't…"
Taesas shook his head in disappointment, reaching deeper into the Fade, sensing her fading breath and quickening pulse, and prepared to take her one step further, right to the precipice of her own death. As she felt her life slipping away, panicked and frightened at the prospect of damnation, she would crumble and agree.
Even the best-trained bards begged pitifully for their lives when the pain grew too great and they could feel their end nearing. How many times had his enemies sent someone to kill him, only for him to turn the tables on the assassins, breaking them bit by bit until they spilled everything he wanted to know?
Vell would be no different. As he pushed her to the edge, she would submit to his wishes.
Taesas opened himself further to the Fade, letting the mana rush in as he prepared to increase the intensity of the spell. He could see Vell's hands trying to fold into fists once more, only for her fingers to quake and tremble and fall open once again.
He nearly choked as the air felt as if it were sucked out of his lungs.
His connection to the Fade was sharply severed, the flow of mana sputtering off as he lost control of the spell. Vell's body released from the cage and she fell to the ground, catching herself roughly on her hands and knees.
As Taesas swayed, bewildered, he felt a hand roughly grab the collar at the back of his breastplate, jerking him backward. It was a moment later that he saw the glowing white hand pressing against his chest as Matteo pushed him, walking him backward step by step away from the rebel.
His anti-magic swelled and Taesas felt as if he were being slowly sucked under the surface of a pool of thick mud. The strength sapped from his muscles and his legs grew shaky as the Knight-Lieutenant pushed him back, his face harsh.
"That is enough of this madness," Matteo said, applying a downward pressure that Taesas had no choice but to follow, bending at the knee as the Templar guided him to the ground with his powerful anti-magic. "I command you to stand down, mage."
There was bitterness in his voice. Taesas could not ever recall a time when Matteo had referred to him as "mage" before. When Templars said it in the Circles, when they said it like that, it was either a slur or a threat.
"Matteo," Taesas said, fighting to find his voice under the pressure of the Templar's power. "I have to save Vivienne."
Matteo did not relent at the plea as he reached down, wrapping his hand around Taesas's staff. He let it go, surrendering it to his friend. "Not like this," Matteo stated.
Taesas labored to breath, lifting his eyes as he watched Jolene help Vell to her feet and began to walk here away from him. He watched her go, knowing that his last and only hope of helping Vivienne went with her. If she would not open the rift, there was nothing else he could do.
If she died, what would happen next? All of the pieces in the Game would be thrown into turmoil. Her sudden exit would leave a massive vacuum in the upper strata. There would be many players seeking to claim the influence that became free at her removal. He couldn't be sure that he would come out ahead. He couldn't be sure that he wouldn't become one of the first victims of the realignment of power. Some of her power flowed through him, but too much of his flowed through her.
The First Enchanter's office in Montsimmard would be ripped from his grasp for sure. The humans who would take up the mantle would show him no love and no mercy. He would need to get out, to transfer elsewhere, somewhere where he could begin again and take advantage of the unsuspecting fools who would never see him coming.
But none of that would matter if the Circles never reformed, if Thedas burned if the Inquisitor perished with her. Without Vell, without his intervention, if they all fell in the beyond, none of it would matter. The Inquisition would begin to rot and die and the chaos they all sought to prevent would eventually overwhelm all of Orlais.
None of them, not Vell, not Matteo, could see all that was at stake. They were blind, foolish. They could stand now on a their simple moral, not realizing that by doing so they were dooming them all.
And yet, here he was. A mage, held to account by a Templar.
Once Matteo dropped his field, he could attempt to go after Vell once more. But to what end? To succeed, he would have to incapacitate or kill Matteo. He would have to end Jolene before she got a chance to summon her anti-magic against him. By now, Vell was certainly weakened to the point that, if he had to engage her again, she wouldn't survive another attack. He knew she would never willingly cooperate, not in the limited time that he would have to convince her to heed his way, if ever.
Taesas dropped his head, knowing that there was nothing more that he could do.
This game was completed. He was hemmed in, with no more moves available to him.
He resigned himself to yet another defeat.
"I am calmed, Matteo," he said, slowly taking a breath that he struggled to inhale under the weight of the anti-magic.
Matteo drew back his power and the anti-magic field dropped. Taesas sighed in relief as he felt the pressure lift off of him, as he felt his connection to the Fade restored. He took another breath before he slowly pulled himself to his feet. He ran his hands down the front of his robe, brushing the dust off of it. He extended his right hand out and Matteo returned his staff.
The Knight-Lieutenant gave him one more disappointed look and turned away without a word, walking back toward his daughter and leaving Taesas to himself. Taesas turned around, ignoring the glances of the Wardens and Inquisition soldiers who had watched him skirmish with Vell, but who were all too weak and scared to do anything to stop it.
They were judging him.
Let them.
When the demons were disemboweling them and they screamed for help or for the mercy of a quick death, he would certainly not be there to give it to them.
He looked at the rift once more, watching its shape bend this way and that as the green light bathed the plaza. Vivienne was somewhere inside of that rift, perhaps standing only a few feet away from him in the Fade, but separated by the impassable barrier of the Veil between them.
He turned away, not wanting to be here any more. There would be preparations to make, moves to plan and defenses to raise. If there were those who wanted to play the Grand Game against him, he would need to be ready to meet them.
"I can see him! I can see the Inquisitor!" a soldier shouted from the plaza.
Taesas turned around to see the edges of the rift twisting more rapidly, the light from within growing brighter. The edges began to buzz with electric as sparks burst around the breach in the Veil. The soldiers standing nearest to it backed away as an audible buzz began to emanate from the tear and the light grew so bright that the once opaque window was now a beaming pillar of whitish-green light.
There was a crack and peal of thunder. Taesas could feel the static running through his hair as he watched the rift. From the white, he could see a spot of black that expanded outward, growing wider as the barrier moved.
And, out of the rift, fell Trevelyan.
The Inquisitor stumbled forward, catching himself roughly on his feet as he tumbled out of the air and landed on the ground. Behind him came the others. Hawke was the second. Warden Blackwall crashed down onto his knees as he skittered out of the rift.
And then, from the Fade itself, emerged Vivienne.
She seemed to float, as if guided by gentle wings, as her heeled boots touched the ground softly. She didn't stumble or jerk. She merely touched the ground and marched forward as if she had just come down the grand stairway at the royal palace in Val Royeaux and entered the ballroom floor.
The Inquisitor turned back, lifting his hand and connecting to the rift, sending a powerful surge of energy ahead as the rift spun and crackled, fighting him until it collapsed inward and burst with one final flash, vanishing from existence.
Vivienne never turned her head, instead walking past the Inquisitor and away from the central plaza. Her chin lifted slightly and her eyes seemed to close, paying no mind to the common soldiers gawking at their incredible reappearance. The tap of her staff upon the stones and the click of her heels were all a perfect, rhythmic music to his ears.
She looked unscathed. She looked unshaken. She looked regal, beautiful, powerful, invincible.
Taesas rushed ahead to intercept her.
"Vivienne!" he cried out as he came to her side, still in some disbelief that she stood before him at all. "You're unharmed! I saw what happened after you fell from the walls and I had feared the worst! I-"
Vivienne interrupted him, lifting her left hand and holding it before his face to silence him.
"Don't be so melodramatic," she said dismissively. "Now leave me be. I have been through an ordeal and I am too weary to suffer your senseless disquiet."
Taesas stopped, silenced.
Vivienne lowered her hand and continued ahead without another word, leaving Taesas to himself.